Sisterhood, smisterhood. You know what’s really powerful? Women laughing together. Really laughing. Truth-laughing.
Even when it’s all not politically or sentimentally perfect. Even when it’s down at the expense of another woman. Or--even better-- at the expense of the women themselves.
It’s most especially glorious when it’s done at the expense of the sort of weirdly conventional absurdities that remain unrecognized as the bizarre things they actually are, when women laugh their asses off because they simply cannot believe what’s happened.
It’s something you’ve almost never seen on television; even in movies, you only get a glimpse here and there.
But in last night’s Mad Men season finale, they got it right: the writers, the actors, the direction—even the blocking in the scene—were perfect.
[Spoiler alert: I’m going to give a brief re-cap of the scene under discussion—I’m hoping someone can help me fix a link to it later on today so that you can see it yourself—but if you’re saving the last episode to yourself as a ploy to get you working through the week or merely ignoring all details about it until you can watch it yourself, you might want to skip this next part.]
I don’t know whether I’ve ever witnessed a more authentic depiction of what transpires between two senior women in a work setting when they hear the news that one of their team is about to marry another one of their team. It’s a moment when doors are closed, cigarette are lighted up, and all previous antagonism are swept off the desk to make room for the important matters at hand: in this case, the desirable handsome boss marrying his endearing sweet, drop-dead gorgeous and very young French-Canadian secretary because not only is she enchanting--she’s also good at cleaning up messes, even when these messes are made by Don’s kids.
Actually, there are two scenes during which we are privileged enough to witness great moments of confluence in the dynamics of the characters--if not quite synchronicity: Don and what’s her-name, the fiancé (real name: Megan Calvert) announced their abrupt engagement at the very moment that Peggy enters the office in a mood than can only be regarded as triumphant in order to announce that she landed a quarter-of-a-million-dollar account.
(Oh, and apart from all this, Don broke up with his previous paramour, an accomplished, ambitious, age-appropriate woman who had been supportive of him in both ethical and unethical ways as the company times became troubled. I suspect we’ll see her boiling bunnies sometime during the next season. But I’ll save her for another post.)
“I’ve learned a long time ago not to get all my satisfaction from this job” declares Joan, in her hoity-toity dismissive voice, to which Peggy--good girl, Catholic girl, accomplished girl--looks into Joan’s eyes and says, “Bullshit.”
The unexpected word hangs in the air for a split second and then everything changes.
From the moment they laugh together as equals, then laugh together wholeheartedly, we arrive at the point that entirely and irrevocably places them on the same side. Now they are co-conspirators; now they are the senior women looking at how the younger women are being treated by the senior men.
It’s something that happens to every woman at work when she realizes she is no longer the ingénue. It’s a huge rite of passage for women and yet one we barely recognize even when it happens.
The fact that Joan and Peggy can experience this moment of intimate connection is crucial in terms of their development as colleagues. They are both laughing at the inevitable living-out of the cliché: “Gee! A man marries his much younger, pliable, worshipful secretary—how unusual!” and these women immerse themselves in their honest responses—not ones of anger or jealousy, but in more of a “C’mon, can you believe Don would be the one taken in by this?” fashion. They want to talk and they can barely wait until they can close that door and talk to each other privately. The conversation would have been wholly different if any man were present.
Peggy and Joan are the two strongest female figures we’ve seen on television this year. Their work in this season’s final episode nailed it.
Compared to Laura Linney—whom I adore as an actress but who spends too much time whining in “The Big C” not to mention feeling a need to explore bikini waxing as part of her character’s journey towards death—and the cardboard-cut female figures in Boardwalk Empire (lush lascivious moronic demimonde girlfriend vs. clean-cut poor-but-I’ve-got-my-virtue immigrant good-mother smart widow lady, no to mention randomly applied female boob shots granted to women both dead and alive), I rely on the Women from Men to make TV great.
Bravo, AMC. Take a big bow and let the women walk off with the real laugh.